'The View' confirms Placentia 'housewife' is hilarious

While many Orange County housewives were preparing for Thanksgiving last week, one was hanging out in the makeup room with Whoopi Goldberg, telling Barbara Walters that she loved her and — the icing on the cake — winning a trip to Kauai.

So, is she taking the kids?

"Oh, hell no."

It's lines like this that got Julie Kidd crowned Hilarious Housewife of 2012 on "The View" television show.

The Placentia mom was one of hundreds of housewives who sent in tapes of themselves cracking jokes for the annual contest. Five were picked to perform live on the morning talk show.

Julie flew to New York City to do a 2½-minute standup bit on Nov. 15. The next day, she got a call at the Costa Mesa tax office, where she is an executive assistant, to tell her she had won. She screamed.

On Nov. 19, she was back on the show so "The View" ladies could crown Kidd the winner and take turns telling her she was seriously funny.

Kidd has a standup comedy show with her sister Cindy Burns and a handful of other female comedians called the Funniest Housewives of Orange County. She's also putting together a one-woman show: "Single Mom, The Musical." It combines comedy with singing and tapping.

The really funny thing is that Dr. Phil once ridiculed her on his show for her tap-dancing exploits.

That show was about people who had spent all their savings on a dream. Kidd had spent her last $5,000 to make the "Tap N Burn" exercise dance video, thinking tapping just might be the next fitness craze.

By the time the show was edited, Julie, then a single mom raising three kids in an apartment in Anaheim, came across as a nut who tortured her kids with tap-dance lessons.

It took her about two months to get over the trauma.

And then they reran the episode

As fate would have it, the day that Julie was to perform on "The View," the guest was none other than Dr. Phil.

She ran into him in the green room. He was booked on the show to shill his latest book.

"I couldn't even make eye contact," Kidd said, fearing he would somehow try and spike her out of the contest.

But then she did what she always does. She turned it into a joke.

She tacked a line onto the start of her bit, telling the "View" audience that she just ran into Dr. Phil backstage and freaked out because she thought that maybe she wasn't really there for the contest after all, but so that he could do an intervention on her.

If only audience knew the backstory.

Kidd says the Hilarious Housewife title is a sweet turn in a long road.

She and her sister (who came in second in Orange County's funniest comedian contest Nov. 16) went into the standup-comedy trenches together 20 years ago, wearing biker shorts and bad perms, no less.

They did dive bars. Coffeehouses. A Pizza Hut. A living room.

"When do I get paid?" Julie asked one employer.

"When you're good," he replied.

One time, Kidd built a makeshift stage at a Lamppost Pizza so she could tap-dance during her monologue. The plywood busted, and she fell through it. That got some laughs.

These days, the laughs come easier. But it doesn't hurt for Joy Behar to tell you on national TV that you should be headlining clubs.

"These are the steppingstones that give you credibility," said Kidd.

Not to mention a trip to Hawaii. She gets four nights at the luxury St. Regis Princeville on the picturesque north shore of Kauai. She leaves in January.